


Ezar's last gift.

by RGmolpus



Series: Last Messages [1]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Beta Colony, Escobar, Gen, Ministry of Political Education, War Party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 08:19:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16929747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RGmolpus/pseuds/RGmolpus
Summary: AU about Prince Serg, and hidden plans.....





	Ezar's last gift.

The General Vorkraft was dying.

Serg could feel the plasma impacts tearing the battleship apart; the impossibly strong bursts of plasma fire that _just wouldn't stop!_ Commodore Rulf Vorhallas had ordered all available power to the shields; but that hadn't stopped the onslaught. Every attempt to destroy the swarming Escobaran ships - barely sized to fight something the mass of the Flagship - meant more enemy fire into the proud ship's sides.

How could this happen? All the planning, all the intelligence from the spys, all the preparation.... That bastard Vorkosigan must have known....

What had Vorkosigan been talking with his father, and that 13 toed dwarf Negri? These new weapons must have been a secret Negri hid from him! Hid from him, the Ministry of Political Education, Minister Grishnov - from the whole of the General Staff - from everyone but his Father, Ezar, and Vorkosigan!

Treason!

Another shudder as the gravplates wavered - around the turn was an escape pod. Grabbing pipes and cables on the bulkhead Serg clambered out of the Command Center; ignored by the staff there as they tried to keep the ship alive under this impossible barrage. Vorkalloner was screaming orders for more shields; more effort from the Damage Control teams; ignoring the Prince.

Into a pod - escape and then turn Grishnov loose on my Father, Negri - Vorkosigan, the lot of them! This failure will kill the old man; then I'll have revenge on everyone - starting with Vorkosigan! His father can't protect him, nor his friends on the Council, or the Ministers; Yuri was right; cut quick, deep, and finally!

The hatch of the escape pod opened without complaint; it's alarm unheard in the cacophony of other alarms and explosions. In the pod, pull the outer door shut, slide the inner door shut - step 1, step 2 step 3, step 4 in the escape and survival drill. Pull the safety webbing across the body, insert your ID card; then pull both ejection handles - WHAM! the automatic sequencer pulled the web tight; the safety doors pulled back - and doublewham as the ejection charge fired.

Serg gritted his jaws counting seconds - one, two, trey, caq, sanct, sext - for the second blast, as the first propulsion charge on the pod fired. Five seconds of burn, at 5 G - he started the calculation to concentrate on the moment - 5 times 10 meters a second per second times 5 seconds - 250 meters a second final velocity - a quarter kilometer away from the flagship each second. The internal electronics of the pod completed their startup cycles; the beep of the ID beacon started at 10 seconds; now neither the Barrayarans or the Escobarans would fire an aimed shot at him. Fragments from an exploding ship; or splash from an errant shot could still hit; but not aimed fire; unless the Escobarans or their allies wanted to risk charges of firing on evacuees.

Serg relaxed; every second was taking him away from the fragmentation zone sure to be formed when the General Vorkraft finally died; the inverse cube law of distance and volume protected his little pod from any but the most chanced of collision. HE had to wait - five minutes after ejection the pod's navigation system would automatically roll and shift the pod to set a course to the defined space for escape pods to gather and be collected. The pod could sustain him for 40 hours; by accepted treaty the superior side would start gathering escape pod of both sides within 29 hours, if not sooner.

Barrayar would pay a huge price to ransom him, _it had to!_ And he might face trial as some sort of warmonger; but his knowledge the Ezar had _known_ the invasion would fail.... had known of those blasted Plasma reflectors - Grishnov would start a movement to reclaim him the **moment** his capture was announced; his father would be forced to pay the ransom... and then... once home... his revenge would start.

The systems of the pod quietly worked; small pips and beeps as the navigator twisted the pod to change its orientation. The inner display screen had already started showing an animation of how far and fast the pod was from the combat zone; along with notations of air quality and supply; and his health monitor. Heartbeat steady, blood pressure good; Kirilian field good - just a matter of waiting for the automatics to direct the pod to the recovery zone.

A sudden flash of light - the General Vorkraft finally died - had Vorkalloner managed to escape? Serg wished that Ges had been with him - in a companion pod - the two of them to wreak vengeance on everyone in Vorbarra Sultana - who had killed him? That last female Betan Ges had taken from the brig? Impossible... Ges would never have let her loose to to be a threat - could that hulk Bothan - Bothari? gone mad? That Bastard Vorkosigan had to know - and he'd confess that, as well as everything else, before he died.... 

The display panel changed from its status display to show the Imperial crest, the crossed Olive branch and Laurel leaf; in Gold - a message - stored somewhere - from the Emperor?

The screen changed to show the Emperor - his father - in dress uniform, or what he could wear of it lying in his hospital bed - the tubes and probes hidden in the sheets and blankets. Ezar's gaze was sharp - this must have been recorded months ago, during one of his better periods.

"Serg, my son..." from the sound system.

"My child... you seeing this is only possible if you're in an escape pod, after your ship was destroyed. This war was your idea, your dream; yours, and your friends in the War Party, and Minister Grishnov. I allowed this wasteful event to happen to rid Barrayar of the disease that infects you, Grishnov, Vorrutyer, and the rest of the War party. When I die, which will be soon, all the sickness you glory in will be eliminated, my last gift to Barrayar."

Serg watched, stunned; his father had planned this disaster - ! _Had planned all this! ? ! ?_

"One event that must happen is your death - hopefully a glorious one in some sort of battle - portraying you as a war hero, dying in a blaze of military glory as your ship dies in a final fight - that will make ending this wasteful tragedy of a disaster simpler. If you are watching this, then extraordinary means must be taken to mold life to the political needs of my plans."

The small image on the screen stopped to take a sip of water, Serg's mouth was dry, empty.

"Your pod will not be directed to the recovery space; instead it will be sending you far above the ecliptic; hopefully lost for decades, or forever. The recovery beacon will be disabled, as is the radar reflector. The medical panel is set to allow you to select any of dozens of doses of drugs to allow you a comfortable death; better that the agony your last attempt to end my life would have caused. Or, you can vent the pod at any time; the safeties are disabled. Before the air runs out, the medpad will sedate you; so your last moments won't be an agony of suffocation.

During the Ceta war... I recall... watching two Ghem dying slowly after they'd foolishly been trapped by some of Piotr's hillmen... nooses around their neck... I hope to spare you that agony, my son..."

Ezar looked down, momentarily.

"I had such hopes for you, my son, my only son... Hopes that you would lead the Planet and it's people into a proper place in the whole of human space. Completed a vision for Barrayar that Dorca, Xav, and I had as the Age of Isolation ended. But you took after my Cousin, Yuri, and showed a blackness of spirit that could only lead into another civil war. Had you shown the least sign of civic virtue, or care for your fellows... I could have left Barrayar to you, knowing that the Council of Counts, and the Ministers would have kept you in check; until your son, Gregor, could replace you. We knew how rancid Yuri was; from his days as a military commander during the last days of the Ceta war; Piotr, Xav, and many others knew that he'd need special effort to prevent disaster.

We waited too long, and he sent his death squads to kill his kin... I can't leave Barrayar to that horror again."

"My son, I weep for you, I've made a burning of 10 thousand for you... This is the last, and only gift I can give to you, the son I held tight on that long, cold night in the Kithari hills, when you were born. It was a time of madness and violence, hate and fear; it must have been in the air you first breathed, that has poisoned you so horribly... I love you, my son... My hands will be forever over and around your Gregor.. I love you, boy"

The screen returned to the crossed Olive and Laurel symbol; Serg didn't see that - only the last sight of his father, weeping, tears down his rugged face. His one free hand groped on the display, reaching to the last image of his father blindly groping to ... nothing.

The outer door of the pod opened soon.

**Author's Note:**

> We never get to see inside Serg's head, or what agony it must have been for Ezar to plan the disaster at Escobar. 
> 
> I was reading "Aral Vorkosigan's Dog" and it struck me that Ezar would have had a plan if Serg managed to escape from his flagship; it would be a larger disaster if he was captured - or even worse - if he came back home. This is something that would have been in the blackest of Negri's files; something that Illyan might have found several years later as he finished a review of ImpSec after Vordarian's Revolt.
> 
> I also have to give credit to Rose_Milburn's "Lost and Found - a Drabble"; about the aftermath and cleanup of Escobaran Orbital Space. 
> 
> (Yes, the calculations Serg was doing in his head aren't accurate, but 9.8 M/S^2 is close enough to 10 M/S^2 to allow some fudging....)


End file.
